Friday, May 20, 2011

The Name

I'm sure many of you have seen posters, canvases and other memorabilia bearing the phrase "keep calm and carry on." According to Wikipedia, the phrase was first used in 1939 on a poster developed by the British Ministry of Information. The poster, the third in a series of three, was designed to boost morale of the British public in the event of an invasion but was never actually distributed. The first two in the series, "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory," and "Freedom is in Peril" were used across the country for motivational purposes. Apparently the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was re-discovered in 2000 and used as a decorative them for various items.

So anyway, I first saw the poster on a website around this time last year. For those of you that may not know, we were living in South Pasadena, California at the time. Brighton had just turned one, Pacey was three-and-a-half and Chris and I were both working full-time. We had recently purchased a house in the mountains to the north of Los Angeles and were trying to find time to make it into a weekend escape spot.

For a number of reasons, both Chris and I were getting increasingly frustrated with the pace and chaos of our lives. I was responsible for the bulk of child-related tasks around my working hours, while Chris was spending an average of two hours each day just getting to and from his job in El Segundo. I joked at the time that Brighton's first words would likely be "hurry up" since that was the only thing I felt like either kid ever heard from me. To make a long, drawn out discussion short, Chris and I decided that we needed to make a big change if we were going to live our lives and raise our kids the way we wanted to.

Note: One should be very, very careful when mentioning to Chris Harris that one has the desire to accomplish something in which he could be instrumental. You may find that what you offhandedly mentioned as a passing whim, he has single-handedly put into motion...

One of the things we had discussed was the fact that we felt like trying to raise our kids around two full-time jobs was causing both of us a lot of stress and discontent. We agreed that we would explore some scenarios in which I would stay home full-time with the kids. Chris sniffed around a few opportunities and, to massively sum up, within approximately three weeks of our discussion he had pursued, interviewed for and been offered a job in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. We decided to accept the offer and he agreed to start the first week of June.

So, I found myself facing the next two months effectively as a single, full-time employed mother, planning to move her family across the country. We had to coordinate the packing and moving of two houses full of possessions (not forgetting the newly purchased mountain home), find and purchase a new home in a state we knew virtually nothing about and, particularly important to us, select an area and school district that would provide the necessary support for Pacey's special needs. To further complicate things, Pacey was having trouble keeping his oxygen saturations at adequate levels and he would need to have his tonsils and adenoids removed prior to the move.

So I came across the Keep Calm and Carry On poster and it became my mantra. The house(s) got packed and moved, Pacey's surgery was completed without incident and was incredibly successful, we found a lovely house in a wonderful neighborhood and school district and I survived getting the kids and I from CA to MN on my own. For the most part, we kept calm and we carried on, and made it in one piece to start our new life. My poster hangs in the basement now as a reminder that we're capable of an awful lot if we approach it the right way.

About Me

I'm a 32-year-old introvert, a classic middle child, hater of conflict and lover of candy. In the past 10 years I've lived in Alaska, California, England and Minnesota. I imported my husband from England and we've spent an eventful decade together. We have two very different but equally wonderful kids: Pacey, born in November of 2006 and Brighton, born in May of 2009. I worked full-time in the insurance industry until the summer of 2010, when I traded that job in for one with pretty crappy pay but some awesome fringe benefits. I'm a much bigger fan of my thirties than my twenties.